“Quercus plays basicaly a doom metal but if i should tell to my grandmother what we play i would not be able to find a word for it“

MFL-007 | Quercus | “Sfumato” |2014

MFL records statement- «Sfumato is the principle of diffusion and softening of the outline of figures and objects, invented by Leonardo.As if following a treatise on light and shadows, the music in the second album of Czech avant-gardists Quercus has no clear logical boundaries. It is blurred, like the boundary between life and death, one permeates another. This music is now lifeless, now breathing, now suddenly awakening imagination…“

Interestingly.

So we have some question for funeral doom band Quercus.

Please a short bio for your band.

We started to record first demo in 2001/02, we were two man project just for recording and until now we dont plan any live show. Quercus rises from the underground of our main band Umbrtka, sometime Quercus sleeps and sometime wakes up when the grief grows stronger.

Where do you have the name Quercus from…?

I think that latin is good for doom so I put the name of my favourite tree into the name of our doom.

When did you start playing and how old were you when you became interested in metal?

I started to play guitar and drums when I was 20 composing music for a second Umbrtka album „Delnický a bezdomovecký šedý metal“.I listend to metal maybe from 10 or 12 years..Megadeath, Metallica, Blind Guardian, My Dying Bride, Anathema etc.

How do you guys write Quercus lyrics ?

My poems have a roots in everyday life and my sympathy for obscure atmosphere, nonsense, absurdity, literature, humour, drinking beer and love.

How would you describe Quercus music to a person that never heard it? Do you direct your music to certain people?

Quercus plays basicaly a doom metal but if i should tell to my grandmother what we play i would not be able to find a word for it.

We have a few close friends who love our doom and a new people can find us via new album and Moscow Funeral League label.

Which imaginative pictures do you seeing, when you listen to your own music and having closed your eyes?

I see some moments from recording when we had a good doomy mood or some funny moments of trying to record difficult instrumental part. For a listeners is good to read the lirycs and drown into the spiritual content of each poem look at the cover artwork.

Is there a message you wish to convey to the listener?

Doom will haunt you untill the death overtakes you.

Some people think that funeral doom is primitive genre because of it’s repetitive riffs... You answer please.

Thats right, some bands play very boring funeral doom.

What were your musical influences at that time? Do you still get influenced by other bands?

My inspiration now is Iron Maiden, Rush, (hey boys, I listen at this moment Rush – Fly by Night – unbelievable, hm, hm. Res.) some jazz or world music, and of course old doom metal albums from funeral doom classics. Now I listen to Gustav Mahler, classical composer and some new metal albums by Pallbearer, Vestige of Virtue, Bethlehem.

What is still your biggest dream as a musician? If you have one...

Yes, we plan to go to Finland and try to talk to Albert Peter and Void to play again and record a new Reverend Bizarre album, becouse we love the band.

Say something about the future plans.

Slowly compose a new material.

What music styles, artists or albums are your favourites in private life?

Doom death black jazz, minimalist, no rap, no techno, no pop.

Please describe yourself with a few words as a person.

Painter, teacher, poet, musician, heavy drinker.

If you were granted one wish, what would it be?

To have a toilet and a bathroom in our new old house in the woods.

Just one last question. Can we expect any new Quercus album in the near future?

Yes, we plan a new album, but in these days I play a some new guitar parts to my six month old daughter.

“Dear Friends! Two and half years ago we told about our break-up and impossibility of reunion in the future. There were a lot reasons which we’re not going to refresh up our memory about. To tell the truth it was the only way to get rid of our creative deadlock at that moment. At least, we truly believed we took good steps and were sure – we wouldn’t play together anymore. It took us some time to think over and draw conclusions. Finally we are glad to say officially about our reunion.

We came back, full of power and plans for the future, which Moscow Funeral League as our new label will help us to realise. MFL is a non-profit organisation established by Moscow musicians. Its main aim is to develop, support and promote such kinds of music as funeral doom and funeral doom-death. Also it includes a growing indie-label MFL records where we’re planning to release the nearest CD.”

MFL -RECORDS presents the first full-length album of Death Metal band DECAY OF REALITY (Moscow, Russia)!

“There are no healthy and happy, there are non-examined and happily ignorant,” this is the ideology of Moscow death metal band DECAY OF REALITY founded in 2012 by M.Hater – guitars (Abstract Spirit) and E.S. – vocals (Who Dies In Siberian Slush, Forbidden Shape), well-known for their works with the avant-garde of Russian funeral/death doom stage.

DECAY OF REALITY’s texts deal with psychogenic disorders, manias, phobias and borderline states of mind.

My Shameful has only got better with each one, its doom metal bearing death metal heaviness with a funeral doom longing. It’s tearing in a sense, the doleful music stabbing your heart ever so slowly, artfully, in a manner that wouldn’t hurt you as much perhaps. This is atmospheric in a way too, playing with your mind, reminiscent of the plodding music of other bands from Finland. This is top notch doom metal that grows on you, creeps over you while you remain transfixed by the gently throbbing, sinking music.

We have before us a joint conceptual work, which unites these bands in terms of views of life and death. According to musicians of Abstract Spirit and ENNUI, “Escapism” is a hopeless escape; the escape from everything… from yourself, from reality and disillusionment, escape from grim realities.“Escapism” stands for a willingness to readily face the soothing death, to get rid of life torments, burdens of miseries and disappointment. Lyrics are written in three languages: Russian for Abstract Spirit; English and Georgian for ENNUI. Art work for the split was made on basis of a work by Moscow modern dark art artist Pavel Lyakhov, who is famous for his gift to visually reflect experience of relationships with outward things in a frightening manner, which can make you go dotty. From the view point of music, one should consider this record to be a comprehensive piece of music art. At the same time either of the two bands reflected their own vision of funeral doom from the own view point using individual scale. Connecting traits are the fundamentality and the thoroughness of the tracks themselves. What has this record in store for an experienced listener? A horrible side-show… the opportunity to walk in shoes of a person, who lacks brain parts in charge of happiness and joy.

The debut work by a one-man band of Roman Kartashov from Saratov, Russia, cannot be accused of the lack of brutality for sure. Fans of the most extreme brutal death metal will have joy of the material carefully elaborated over a period of several years. The album is full of anger and hatred to all the living. Fast tremolos alternating with heavy riffs, powerful blast beats and breakdowns, stinging guitar solos and growling vocals will take the fancy of the most discerning listeners. Mass murder, cannibalism, torture, extermination of people – this is what you will hear, and it will etch the name KRAWORATH in your memory.

Total must have for the fans of Cannibal Corpse, Slayer and Putrid Pile rolled into one!

1. Cold Somnolence.2. Ennui.3. A Moment In The Void.4. Loss.5. The Descendant Of Lifeless Rebirth.6. The Last Way.

This album is a farewell to the last way, epitaph on a cold gravestone, carved in a form of music. Heavy aggressive riffs, beautiful guitar solos, new dark and monumental sound with complete absence of keyboards! New LP from ENNUI is better than the predecessor LP in terms of both compositional aspect and tragic atmosphere.

Formed in 1999, Finnish group My Shameful began it s life as a two-man project aimed to create music in the vein of My Dying Bride and Shape of Despair,only to do it heavier and more intense.

Discography

Of All the Wrong Things Full-length 2003

...of Dust Full-length 2004

The Return to Nothing Full-length 2006

Descend Full-length 2008

Penance Full-length 2013

Hollow Full-length 2014

In 2014 My Shameful was contacted by Russia s Moscow Funeral League,or MFL-Records as they are also known to release the next My Shamefulalbum. So the band started working. This time around, drums and basswere recorded in Germany, guitars and vocals in Finland, and the albumwas mixed and masters in Finland.

1. There are 6 magnificent albums that have found a cozyplace in the collections of music connoisseurs all over theworld, is this what you wanted to reach as a musician by2014? This question is in regards both to your own musicalactivity, as well as any side-projects you participate in.Can you ever say: I can not write music?

Good question, am I where I imagined to be at this time? I don t really know, I ve never had any long-term plans as a musician. I have a tendency to just make music and release it out there into the "wild" and see how it goes. For sure, there is a goal with our music, but on the other hand, I have no "career" goals as a musician. That kind of keeps the pressure of me and enables me to be 100% creative, instead of trying to find a hit formula.

Of course, there are times when I simply have no inspiration to write music. At those times I just lay down the guitar and have a break from music for a while, it might be hours, it might be days or even weeks.

2. Does the musician have right to hold his own creations"for better times" (the next album and so on)? Or do theproducts of creativity need to be used here and now totheir fullest?

I have some songs tucked away, to be revisited later on, maybe something comes out of them, maybe not, you never know.

3. Do you think about the listener s perception of onepassage or the other? Or does your work flow like a streamof consciousness? Is it worth try to please the listener?

Of course I think about how the listener perceives the music, the songs structure, the lyrics, the melodies have to fit. I m not saying that I m trying my best to create an entertaining and pleasant experience, quite the opposite really... We do not create music that is easy to listen to, it needs, it has to make the listener a bit uncomfortable. At the end this is not music about love and peace and harmony, it is all about regret, hate, sorrow, despair, nothing uplifting.

4. I m familiar with all of your work with My Shameful.Don t you find that your albums (including “Hollow”) seepwith emotions? If yes, why? Is that a national trait or areflection of your own personality ?

I don t know, that s how the music comes out. Always has and maybe always will. It is part of my personality, of course. I don t set out to create certain kind of music, it just is what it is.

5. Do you have something against critics tagging yourmaterial as "Funeral Doom / Death Metal"? How do you defineyour own music? Maybe, down-tuned country metal? ))

I guess death/doom metal would fit the bill. I don t really care for this pigeon holing, but I guess the critics kind of have to have it sliced and diced...

6. In your opinion, how does "Hollow" differ from yourprevious albums? What exactly is its appeal for youpersonally, besides the fact that it is your “child”?

Well, if you compare it to the early works, there s a world of difference, if you compare it to Penance, not so much. But I think the new album, "Hollow", is perhaps our most diverse album so far, and also the black metal influences are perhaps strongest on this one.

I think Hollow is a very intense journey, that s the greatest point of it to me, the level of intensity does not really drop at any point.

7. Please tell us more about the musicians who participatedin the recording of the album.

Juergen (drums) is a very talented and diverse drummer with a background in technical blackmetal, while Twist (bass) has a background in groove-metal, even nu-metal. And then there s of course me with my death and black metal background... But together we can create such heavy music that it ain t even funny.

8. Your words for the future listeners of "Hollow"?

Keep your mind open. There s maybe a few surprises in there, but then again this is no lounge-jazz or top40 pop.

More Hate presents the most unusual album in its catalog - grind punk death-n-roll! This is how the musicians define their style! Rollicking, excentric and intentionally fussy grind/death metal based on groovy blues and rock multiplied by slovenly lyrics about everyone and their grandmother, starting from gays and ending with somebody’s unrequited love story will definitely touch every listener of this album! Finally, as a special treat, the album includes three armour-piercing cover-versions of the songs originally performed by Nirvana, Motorhead and even by the dinosauria of rock music The Arrows with their song I Love Rock ’n’ Roll!!!

The debut full –length album by the Ukrainian band Contaminated consists of 12 slabs of freshly sliced and expertly stuffed brutal death metal meat of choice. The style of the band was influenced by North American and European old school death/ grind metal of the 90’s enriched with the elements of melodic death/ thrash metal and, at times, even with the fragments close to doom metal.

Gorgeous, stunningly atmospheric and incredibly heavy stuff created by international band UNMERCENARIES, which consists of collaborators from Who Dies In Siberian Slush (Rus), Decay Of Reality (Rus), Forbidden Shape (Rus), My Shameful (Fin / Ger), Absent / Minded (Ger). One of the tracks is perfectly complemented with vocals by Daniel Neagoe of London band Eye Of Solitude.

New full-length album by GRACE DISGRACED is writhen of rich and greasy guitar riffs, carnivorous and inimitable vocals by Polina ‘Grace Dis’ Berezko, hypnotically-fascinating drumming and bass lines that will definitely tread you into the ground. The band continues its development and presents a really monumental work that unfolds song by song and carries a listener away to the incogitable abysses beyond cosmogonies, bring him to the depth of parallel continua, worlds and wild anachronistic universes. The album can move heart with its touching, cold and torturing philosophy! The concept is based on the image of warrioress, mother, executioness, empress. Passionless, she keeps observing the roiling stream of progress, the empires built on the bones at her feet. Following the tradition of the previous album GRACE DISGRACED present seven monumental songs – the result of its unrestrained fantasy, complemented with artwork for full-immersion into the world created by the band! And let the infinite regenesis go on!

Debut full-length album by pagan metal band from Irkutsk includes songs composed between 2008-2010. However on this album they have finally formed an entity both from ideological and musical sides.

"Pod pokrovom vekov" (Under the pall of the centuries) is a kind of a bottom line drawn under the early works of the band. This album represents an attempt to get a glimpse of the world of our primogenitors and to evaluate the path from the Early Rus’ up to the present days and to sing of all the good things and to share the hate towards all the hostile and vile things. This idea can be traced throughout the whole album without prejudice to the individual value of each song. Musically the album represents a mixture of different genres of exterme metal (Black, Thrash, Death metal) coupled with folk melodies. The name of the CD and the artwork perfectly convey the concept and the atmosphere of the album.

Debut album from melodic black metal band Nefas Terra (Podolsk) performing the fast paced melodic black metal with death metal elements. The album consists of six tracks, each song is a cry of the hopeless one. Lyrics deal with the themes of loneliness, misanthropy, spiritual despair and unwillingness to accept the conventional religious canons. The material composed as early as 2006 was recorded in 2010. In May 2013 “Poison” promo-video was released with the assistance of Hakan Sjodin of Setherial (Sweden). Over the years the concepts and ideas behind Nefas Terra have changed allowing "Life in Darkness" to stand on its own as a product of the band's early days.

Records and More Hate Productions: the new album by the mysterious French funeral doom metal project Abysmal Growls Of Despair! The one-man project of Hangsvart is the embodiment of human insanity, the child of grief and despair, the world haunted by Lovecraft’s creatures and full of Beckett’s magic words! The music of the project is a pure funeral doom metal turning into drone/ambient from time to time. During the 68 minutes of album length the listener will be wrapped up in the atmosphere of horror and impending evil. The dark power emanating from these raw and kind of neglectfully recorded guitar lines, from monotonous low-frequency buzzing and vibrations of keyboards suddenly turning into a pure neo-classical music create a solid soundscape of darkness, mysticism and the deepest despair! CD-version comes with 3 special bonus-tracks!

Gorgeous, stunningly atmospheric and incredibly heavy stuff created by international band. Four songs, lasting almost three quarters of an hour, where each minute is soaked in dark hopelessness and inexorability of time; whose millstone shall eventually grind everything away.

ANDRALLS – hard-edged speed thrash, as it must be. Brazils know a lot about frenzy – rapid riffs, quality and aggression advantageously distinguish the band from their steadied down colleagues by genre. Moreover, ANDRALLS – gig killing machine: live may sound even harder than albums! They define themselves as FASTTHRASH, that more than true describe their sadistic musical inclination. 5 studio and 2 live albums, plus hundreds of gigs behind!

Tracklist:1.Under The Insanity2.Rising From The Shell3.Eye For An Eye4.Lost In Haven, Found In Hell5.Maze Of Confront6.The Legacy Of Violence7.Enemy Within8.Clenched Fists Up9.Land Of Disgrace10.Policia Asesina11.Lit Fuse12. BloodshedUNDER THE INSANITY (OFFICIAL CLIP)

The debut album by the band from Smolensk consists of eight tracks including three songs taken form demo 2006. The band performs its variant of mid-tempo melodic black-death metal with strong gothic-doominfluence. On a compositional level the album structure is based on thick guitar riffs classical for this genre, entrancing keyboard melodies alternating with dynamic drumming and topped with uncompromising, deep, brutal growling. The lyrics of the album narrate on loneliness and despair of ancient Indonesian mythological creatures, motherly love and anguish of bereavement, clouded relationships between man and god, devil and himself, difficulties of a life’s journey beyond the middle-brow values.

Third full-length album by Modern Heavy Metal band from Russia.“…From the first few seconds you plunge into the atmosphere of a theatre, close your eyes and begin to listen to enchanting Symphony, when suddenly a big chandelier breaks away and falls at your head, breaking you with guitar riffs, tooth-crushing speed drums, bass mega parties, symphonic choral arrangements and vocals, ranging from clean to growling!

The second full-length album of "Gmork". It includes 10 compositions that were polished in many concerts of 2009-2011. The album is very eclectic and has both best speed tracks and more experimental atmospheric tracks as well. The concept is around two of man's stimulating powers in external conflict with each other and at the same time very close to each other - craving for Life and craving for Death.

And only 8 years after the original release More Hate presents the official reissue of this album, thus putting the historical record straight!!! Speaking about the music the material of the album follows the best traditions of Swedish death metal slaughter in the vein of DISMEMBER, CARNAGE, ENTOMBED, GOD MACABRE.

This is the first full-length album since the band appeared 7 years ago. Such a long background wasn’t lost – and the band hit listener’s ears with really crashing blow. Lyrics reflects the core of real life, human phobia, fatal illnesses, social aperiodicities and civilization crash. Mighty and rich sound, quality and drive in the best traditions of the genre.

The fifth long-awaited album by the melodic death metal quintet from Spain demonstrates a new stage of musical development of the band. The style of Mistweaver on the new album is much heavier and darkerresulting from the low tuned guitars and slowed down tempo of the songs. Epic keyboard lines and slow powerful guitar riffs became more prominent in the structure of the songs adding melancholic and gothic flare to the sound of the Spanish band. At the same time Mistweaver preserve their inherent melodism once borrowed from Scandinavian death metal bands as well as a calling card of the band – impressive and deep growling of the irreplaceable vocalist Raul Weaver along with female vocal lines untypical for death metal! Thanks sound engineer maestro Dan Swanö (Edge of Sanity, Nightingale, Bloodbath) the album sounds really heavy/

TESLATHRONE is an experimental avant-garde project of young musicians from Minsk, Belarus, aimed at wide range of extreme contemporary music lovers of such genres as industrial, darkwave, drum`n`bass, dubstep etc., that they closely fuse together with their roots in good old black metal.

The debut album by Brutal Death Metal band from Tatarstan includes re-recorded old stuff from demos and new songs which have not been heard before. This release is a high-quality brutal death metal that lyrically deals with contemporary social problems. This album will please slamming population of planet Earth with greasy guitar riffs and breakdowns, classical deep death metal vocals narrating that the sends of modern civilization are running out. Recommended for the fans of such bands as Abominable Putridity, Cerebral Incubation, Acranius, Begging For Incest, Turbidity, Dysentery.

the debut full-length album by NOROMILUCALEN (Velikiy Novgorod) consisting of 7 tracks: six new songs and one track taken from demo 2007. The band plays grim and evil technical post black metal keeping to the modern traditions of this genre. The core of the album – solid, technified whilst psychedelic black metal resembling late Mayhem and Aborym – breaks into squally uncompromising black metal attacks in the vein of Immortal over and over again. Impious chatter of drums, cadenced and groovy guitar riffs, atonal and melodic inclusions topped with grim, chilling screaming vocals create the infernal atmosphere of impending Apocalypse! Some songs are performed in Finnish.